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June 6, 2000: This message was distributed by Papyrus News, a free e-mail distribution
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Here's one of the more interesting weekly newsletters on computing.More along the lines of enthusiastic
industry predictions, rather than critical social commentary, but very
informative nonetheless.I won't send
it out regularly, so those who want to receive it should subscribe yourselves.
I recommend reading it on the Web, rather than via email, as the Web version usually
includes images and links.

As always, the RCFoC is also available as a "radio" show in three Web-based
audio-on-demand flavors: "RealAudio" technology from RealNetworks,
ToolVOX from VOXware, and MP3. It's easy to set up and use, and works over even
slow modems -- give it a try by clicking on the "RCFoC Radio" icon
next to this issue on the RCFoC home page at http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc <http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc>!

"In a survey conducted by The Economist with market-research firm MORI,
76% of youthful respondents (median age 23) said they viewed the Internet
revolution on a par with the industrial revolution, and ranked Bill Gates third
behind Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi as the greatest individual of the
20th century..."

paints a picture of our wireless future that may seem outrageous -- until
you remember that this is what has already happened to wired phone networks:

"All the [wireless] carriers
painted a picture of a day when data

would be the primary wireless
signal and voice would be secondary."

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How Fleeting
Our History...

My Mom came to visit recently, and even though I've yet to convince her to
reach out and touch the Web, her low-tech visit triggered some very high-tech
thoughts.We were engaged in that most
traditional of Mother's Visit activities, going through a box of old family photographs,
when we came across several "personally recorded" small 78-RPM
records; they were apparently from my Dad to my Mother when he was overseas
during World War II.This was long
before the days of tape, so various organizations such as the USO provided this
recording service to soldiers so their families at home could actually hear
their voices.(One record even has a
full-color Pepsi commercial emblazoned across its face -- and you thought
"banner ads" were new for the Internet!)

"Well," I thought, "playing these old records would be a real
Mother's Day treat for Mom!"Although a CD/DVD player had long-since replaced our venerable
turntable, I knew it was still in the basement, so up it came; it was the work
of but a moment to hook it into the sound system. And then the
disappointment...

My old turntable, it turns out, was not quite old enough.As you probably suspect by now, it would
play 33 and 45 RPM records, but not 78s.The voice was there, buried under the scratches and pops, but it was
very ssssllllllooooowwwwwwwww.

Now I will admit to thinking of digitizing the slow audio into my PC and
speeding it up through software, but I could tell from the very poor quality
that I'd do better starting with the correct speed.So the project is on-hold until I dig up a 78-RPM turntable.

The Point.

But this did get me to thinking...We had no problem looking at several generations of paper photographs,
even though some looked to be from the early days of photography itself.A several generation-old family tree on dry
and yellowed paper was still quite readable.And old diplomas and mementos posed no problems at all.Yet the moment "technology" reared
its head, the words on those 78-RPM records were lost to our reminiscing, at
least until I bring some new technology, or an old phonograph, to bear. Some of
the paper records we enjoyed viewing may well have been 200 years old, but the 60-year
old records held their secrets tight.

The parallel to how we're increasingly storing information today, in digital
format, is all too obvious, and the dangers are all too real. I have old
single-density Macintosh disks I can no longer read, even if the information is
still intact on the media (highly doubtful.) Somewhere else in my basement are
reels of DECtape that, without calling in some favors, will never again remind
me of programs I wrote long ago.In
another box I have perhaps a dozen different disk and tape media that I no
longer have the drives to read, and anyway, their content has doubtlessly
succumbed to magnetic old age.

Looking more recently, I have some 8mm videotapes of my kids, and while the
old 8mm camcorder still works, it has been replaced with a DV (Digital Video)
version.So, when my 8mm camcorder
plays its last, I'm unlikely to get it fixed or replace it.What then happens to those old movies if I
don't transcribe them to my "new media" first?And even if I do transcribe those 8mm tapes
to DV tape, how long will those "DV" tapes remain playable...?

Don't Take This (Only) Personally.

I've been using "personal" data here as an illustration, but this issue,
of the long-term integrity of stored digital data, very much extends to
businesses and to governments.Consider
how much information is now being stored exclusively in computer-readable format,
with no paper backup.What are the
implications when (not if, but when) those tapes and disks are no longer
readable due to media failure or reader obsolescence?What if, ten years from now, you need to access information for
your small or large business, only to find that no paper records were ever kept
and the magnetic backups are, at best, only somewhat readable.What would happen if hospitals and town halls
"upgrade" their old, cumbersome but long-lived paper records, to new
easily searchable, but perhaps not "for the ages," digital media, and
fifty years from now your kid needs a new birth certificate...?

Certainly, there are ways around this:constantly regenerating magnetic tape (copying from one tape to another
before the original degrades) can help, and some CD-ROMs can last longer
(although I've been told that the typical writable CD-ROM is not as "cast
in stone" as I might have expected, having a life expectancy of less than
ten years.)And I'm sure there are
other, longer-term archival media out there that can be used by governments or
businesses to safeguard their most important data.

But my old box of "photographs" does illustrate that MOST
information (government, business, and personal) will never get that
"special archival treatment." Which places much of our national,
business, and personal histories at risk of being lost to the ages through the
decay of magnetic domains, the physical aging of tapes and disks, and the molecular
drift of the pits in CDs.The
photographs in my old box, however, are likely to remain intact for generations
of Mother's Day's viewings to come.It
is something to ponder.

Our past would be a terrible thing to waste...

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Your Feedback
is Important!

I'd like to understand your interest in the RCFoC, how you make use of it,
and the value you feel it provides to you, your career, and to your company.

The Knowledge Age "David" we've been discussing recently may rise again,
with a few technological twists that may now keep the lawyers at bay.What I'm talking about is upstart
iCraveTV.com, the tiny Canadian company that began Webcasting U.S. and Canadian
TV broadcasts to the world.In spite of
800,000 visitors spending an average of 45 minutes on the site, iCraveTV had to
pull the plug under massive legal threats (http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc/20000207.html#_Toc474135690

CEO Bill Craig plans to be "back on the air" (David used that
phrase for want of a new catch-phrase for Webcasting -- "back on the
fiber" just doesn't quite sound right) by Labor Day with a new technology
he calls Country Area Networks.It
would restrict the viewing of individual channels to those countries where it
was legal for this activity to take place.

Time will tell if this can work in the relatively geography-independent world
of the Internet, and if such restrictions will blunt the lawyers' swords, but
Mr. Craig certainly does get an "A" for spunk.Which, if you think about it, is exactly
what keeps pushing things forward...

On the other hand, RCFoC reader Gordon Edall suggests that there may be some
downsides to imposing "borders" within the Internet:

"Say hello to a new internet
that will look nothing like the old

one. Say hello to nations and
city states where some people make

sure you cannot share thoughts
with your neighbors down the road

because of an invisible
cyber-border designed to protect rights

holders and ensure that positions
of privilege are maintained. Of

course, I just like the old
internet..."

I rather suspect that iCraveTV.com's new technology would only affect who
could watch THEIR broadcasts, and so not actually set up any "borders"
that could affect other activities.But
Gordon's concern -- that widespread adoption of such techniques by many
publishers could effectively destroy the global nature of the Internet -- is a
concern worth keeping in mind. It would be a great shame (and an immense economic
loss) to partition the world's first global, egalitarian, voice and
marketplace!

Before you look at your current 56K modem and tell me that shared cable modem
service would be "quite fine for me, thank-you-very-much," remember
that similar statements have been made every time a new modem technology
increased available bandwidth.For
example, I recall when 9600-baud modems came out -- I could suddenly fill an
entire VT100 terminal screen in the blink of an eye, far faster than I could
read it.So this was clearly all the
bandwidth I'd ever need.Right -- all it
took was the transition to a graphics-based interface, and those once-fast
modems again had much in common with molasses.

So, I suggest that even though most of us are still lusting after the DSL
and cable modem connections that are increasingly becoming available, THEY WILL
NOT BE FAST ENOUGH.The day will come
(and not terribly far away, if Internet Time continues its relentless acceleration),
when a "mere" 380 kilobits/second DSL connection, or a shared 10
megabits/second cable modem connection, will again feel like walking
underwater.

What could cause this?One obvious
possible bandwidth-driver is the maturing of Internet-delivered full-motion,
full-screen, high-quality, enhanced video-on-demand, already being explored by
sites such as www.atomfilms.com <http://www.atomfilms.com>.

For example, have you viewed "The New Arrival," a four-minute
online film that was shot in a 360-degree format?You use your mouse to freely look completely around the camera's
position, rather than your being a slave to where the director pointed it
(which I'm sure made the filming rather "interesting").This new way of viewing a movie, which goes
far beyond what we can experience at a movie theater, is available today at http://www.atomfilms.com/default.asp?film_id=809
<http://www.atomfilms.com/default.asp?film_id=809>.I
didn't much care for The New Arrival's content, and the quality, even over a high-speed
line, is not yet great.But imagine how
the entire art of movie making (and viewing) might change if (when?) bandwidth
increases to allow for similar 360-degree interactivity at excellent quality!

Or, the bandwidth-driver might be ever-more compelling interactive worlds,
such as Sony's EverQuest (www.everquest.com <http://www.everquest.com> ).Or it might be bandwidth demands generated
by applications we haven't yet imagined. But history suggests that these
bandwidth-consuming applications will surely arrive -- they always have.Which is why ideas to change the bandwidth
rules, such a new one from Advent Networks, are so interesting.

Putting this in perspective, if they can pull this off, each user would have
26-times the bandwidth of a T1 connection.A typical MP3 file would download in about a second; two full-quality
HDTV signals could be delivered simultaneously.

Is this in the "too good to be true" category?Their well-animated Web site at http://www.adventnetworks.com/ <http://www.adventnetworks.com/>was labeled "under construction" when
I explored it, and provided virtually no supporting detail.But they have received $5 million in initial
funding from Murphree Venture Partners and others, and Advent's CEO Geoffrey
Tudor expects $30 million in second round financing.

Of course, this particular idea may go nowhere. Or, it may rocket the Knowledge Age to unprecedented heights.How would we expand our use of the Internet
if 40 megabits/second became the norm?And how would it change established industries, such as broadcasting and
entertainment? Just perhaps, we'll get the opportunity to find out...

A bare-bones Web server based around a 386 chip and a solid state disk, this
Linux server is powered by a "battery" composed of twelve potatoes connected
in series, each delivering about one-half volt and lasting for a few days (the
moist, salty insides act as an electrolyte when zinc and copper electrodes are
poked into the tuber.)

It may sound foolish, but potato power is certainly an easily renewable resource.And as electronics continue to shrink and
consume ever-less power, who knows -- it's a lot cheaper to drop in replacement
veggies than a new set of batteries!In
any event, this fun project does remind us how little is
"impossible."

I've always believed that if a well-funded think tank or government body
collected a broad set of scientists and "proved" to them, beyond their
doubt, that another country had successfully developed anti-gravity, if they
then gave the scientists all the time and money they needed, those scientists
would eventually "catch up" and figure out how the others had
"learned" to control gravity.My budget doesn't quite go to funding such an experiment, but I do
continue to believe that the "impossible" only takes a little
longer...

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About the "Rapidly
Changing Face of Computing..."

The "Rapidly Changing Face of Computing" is a weekly technology
journal providing insight, analysis and commentary on contemporary computing
and the technologies that drive them.

The RCFoC is written by Jeffrey R. Harrow, Principal Member of Technical Staff
with the Technology & Corporate Development organization of Compaq Computer
Corporation.